Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#311

Post by whywhywhywhy » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

fortran77 wrote: post #259

Windows 10 on good hardware is very, very nice. My advice is "don't fight windows". I've seen many people try to make Windows like Unix. Don't. Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW. Learn to use Powershell and Powershell scripting language. I do development (C/C++/CUDA/Erlang/Python) all day long on Windows 10 and in addition use desktop applications like Microsoft Office and Adob…

Seconding the Surface line, been using one for around a year and find it on par or surpasses an Apple laptop hardware wise.

Trackpad difference is negligible, keyboard has real key travel and feels great to type on, pen support without buying a $1000 iPad, light and thin but with both usb-a and c.

Don’t even mind using Windows, I still like MacOS but until a hardware option exists again that serves my needs then I’m being forced to look elsewhere. (Linux isn’t an option in my case due to Adobe)

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#312

Post by tomduncalf » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #277

alexandercrohde wrote: post #258

Aside from all the bitterness about ports, touch-bars, lock-in, blah-blah, I have a sincere question. Does anybody know a comparably DURABLE competitor? I have 99% confidence I could knock my macbook air off my bed (while on) 100 times in a row with 0 consequences. I've never had a key come off, had the screen flicker, had a battery problem, had an overheat. I'd be curious if anybody thinks there's any other laptop c…

I'm not sure about this anymore, my 2016 MBP has gotten some gnarly body dents all over it and it lives in my backpack and on my work desk. I've never actually dropped it. The 2016+'s seem incredibly soft. You're likely talking about the internals which on mine seem ok. Except my right speaker makes crackle sounds 100% of the time. It's so distracting that the few times I've brought it on trips and used it to watch m…

One of my speakers also has issues (not cracking in my case, more like weird resonance) so until I have time to take it in to Apple, my workaround is to pan the sound over to the good side, in Sound Preferences. Not ideal but works okay for watching movies etc.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#313

Post by FussyZeus » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

cytzol wrote: post #253

mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

> In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. I've heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don't agree with it at all. I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are…

People always criticize the lack of customization too as though it's an inherent flaw, like things must be customizable or not be good and I disagree. I love having my Windows Desktop to tinker on, but my Macbook is my workhorse. I don't care if I can customize it to any great degree. I've paid a lot of money for that machine and I expect it to work, without troubleshooting, and without fiddling. I akin it more to going to a very nice restaurant and spending $150+ for a dinner for two: I don't want to give the chef my recipe for some mediocre meal, I want the chef's recipe because it's likely going to be amazing.

Tl;dr: Customization is highly overrated.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#314

Post by curioussavage » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

chendragon wrote: post #294

gigatexal wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have had some exotic edge cases then because I’ve never run into this situation. MacOS is unix-y enough to compile your own binaries like a John Siracusa does. And if you’re a dev the Mac is still a much better platform for getting paid than any other platform (until ElementaryOS takes off...). I use a number of really cool apps to do things I would get likely for free on Linux like magnet for window manage…

Most Linuxes attempt to detect a HiDPI screen (hi resolution basically) nowadays but you cannot do fractional scaling as easily as you could on a Mac, especially on Wayland. You can only do 2x or 1x.

Latest version of gnome supports fractional scaling

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#315

Post by accnumnplus1 » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

I use a 2014 MBP at home, a new xps 13 at work. Everything about the Mac is more polished. The hardware differences being more important to me than the software differences. The xps trackpad is a bit flakey, too sensitive maybe; I'll be working away when suddenly I'll have miraculously switched focus to a window on another screen. Does my palm get to close to it whie typing? I guess, but no such issue on the mac. After less than six months I can see keyboard marks starting to appear on the xps screen. The xps 13 keyboard is far better than the Latitude I had previously, which was outright hell, but the mac is higher quality, precision engineering. No contest for me, but I do wish Apple had built a Linux OS for compatibilty reasons. And the reason I'm still on a 2014 model is because the subsequent models haven't appealed. I've been considering an x1 carbon as a mac replacement. Time may soon force my hand.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#316

Post by crazysim » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

mduerksen wrote: post #168

Any serious contender should have an answer to the MBPs extraordinary touchpad. It is key to working without a mouse, and therefore being truly mobile and comfortable at the same time. So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed. Some examples: - Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of yo…

The technical requirement I see as a prerequisite would be support for the Precision Touchpad standard. That's a major part of the magic inside Mac Touchpads. It's a shame there isn't that many external Precision Touchpad hardware. Users would pay a lot more attention to touch if so. That said, at least there's a Windows Precision Touchpad driver for the Magic Trackpad 2:

https://github.com/imbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad/issues

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#317

Post by rabite » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #258

Aside from all the bitterness about ports, touch-bars, lock-in, blah-blah, I have a sincere question. Does anybody know a comparably DURABLE competitor? I have 99% confidence I could knock my macbook air off my bed (while on) 100 times in a row with 0 consequences. I've never had a key come off, had the screen flicker, had a battery problem, had an overheat. I'd be curious if anybody thinks there's any other laptop c…

Panasonic Toughbooks. Many of them are certified under milspec standards for durability. Drop it off your bed? You can drop safely drop several of them from the top of a telephone pole.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#318

Post by eropple » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #309

Symbiote wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stretching this analogy even further: With Linux, we have a choice of over 20 different housemaids and lawn-cutting robots, though choosing between them is difficult at first. Most lawn robots can also sweep patios or shovel snow, so if you move to a different climate you can use the same tools.

I'd like to have a house set up and ready with a decent selection of pre-configured robots to take care of my needs, with an easy interface to reconfigure them or add some new ones. Or are we still talking about Linux?

TBH, at this point I think you just described Fedora. I’ve been using it everyday for three years and the total set of customizations I’ve needed to make, outside of my developer stuff, has been...remapping a few keys, really.

The absolute worst, edge-case-est thing I’ve hit: I did have to install a COPR to install (with zero configuration) Bumblebee to be able to completely disable my discrete GPU to save battery life when I was on vacation, and multi-monitor with Bumblebee sucks, so when I got back I uninstalled Bumblebee and Nouveau took back over.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#319

Post by kerng » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #270

fortran77 wrote: post #259

Windows 10 on good hardware is very, very nice. My advice is "don't fight windows". I've seen many people try to make Windows like Unix. Don't. Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW. Learn to use Powershell and Powershell scripting language. I do development (C/C++/CUDA/Erlang/Python) all day long on Windows 10 and in addition use desktop applications like Microsoft Office and Adob…

"Learn to use Powershell and Powershell scripting language." YMMV. I tried PS for a few years and just couldn't get into it. Installed WSL as soon as that came out and haven't touched PS since.

You can also run PowerShell on Linux now.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#320

Post by kerng » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

I have both MBP and Surface Laptop 2. I personally like the Suface much better. And most importantly the entire Office stack on Windows is superior to anything on Mac or Google things.

The keyboard on Surface Laptop is also superior, and I never liked the touchpad. Big touch screen fan!

What feels less nice is the screen attachment, it seems less stable. The MBP has a nicer mechanism for locking in I think.